I'm having a problem with my sound card, and it seems like a lot of people are having this problem, but i can't get any of the solutions to work for me, so if anyone has fixed this, please help me.

i have a pretty standard Dell Dimension 4800 Desktop package, with a Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit sound card.

I am running the official download release of Mandrake 10.1

i don't know how to change the kernel or anything like that
none of the other solutions people have posted have worked for me

am i just SOL?

Dude your main problem is ITS A DELL!!! But anyways dell supports the linux operating system on most models. Type your service tag into their support page and search for the linux version of your sound driver. Hope they have it.

thank you for the advice, but the dell site only supported red hat linux, and it didn't have any drivers for that either. if ANYONE can help me, I'd... well... appreciate it. thank you

What exactly is the nature of the problem? What steps are you performing, and what error or system messages are being generated (if any)? I'll assume you mean that you cannot hear any audio, which can be caused by a large number of factors. Things to check:

* verify the speaker cable is connected to the correct jack on the sound card
* verify that the small cable running from the CD player is connected to the sound card
* make sure the speakers are plugged in
* make sure the speakers are turned on
* make sure the speaker volume is turned up
* make sure the volume level on the audio application (XMMS, or whatever) is turned up
* make sure your sound card is configured (using alsaconf)
* make sure your volume levels are not muted, and turned up to a reasonable level (using alsamixer)
* make sure you've got the right permissions on /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer (both should be 666)

There may be other issues that interfere with sound, but those are some of the common ones. Good luck with it -- J.W.

specifically, the problem i'm having is with the driver

the card came with a driver on a cd, but it won't run in linux
i've done some searching, and found that other people had the same problem, and were able to download drivers. I think the one that sounds like it's been working for people is emu10k1x, which i can't find, and if i did, i wouldn't know how to put it to use.

Please provide more information. Just stating that you're having a problem with "the sound card", then stating that you're having a problem with "the driver" doesn't give people enough information to go on. I realize the issue may be clear as day to you, however, for people who can't look over your shoulder and see what you're seeing, it's difficult to provide suggestions/advice when the issue is described only in vague terms.

What specific steps have you tried to perform, and what was the corresponding system response? As for the emu10k1x module, you should first check to see if it has already been loaded, by running the lsmod command, and if it t loaded, then you can manually load it by running "modprobe <module>" where <module> is the actual module you want (in this case emu10k1x. That's a fairly typical module which probably will be part of your existing distro, but if not then you'd need to track it down and manually build it. Good luck with it -- J.W.

You can configure your sound card easily using teh Mandrakelinux Control Center. IIRC, the menu path is Start --> System --> Configure My Computer (I'm at work, not in front of my Linux box). I think the sound card is in the "Hardware" section.

I'll check back in a couple hours when I get home from work....

http://www.alsa-project.org/ That is the site that has the SB Live drivers and from what I hear they work. Good Luck!

Okay, here we go:

Start --> System --> Configuration --> Configure your computer

Select the "Hardware" button, then the "Hardware" button in that.

On the left side (you may need to scroll) you will find an item labeled "Soundcard". If it is not already expanded, click the little triangle beside it to open it. You should see something like "SB Live! (audio)". Click on that to bring up information about the device in the right panel.

At the bottom of the right panel, you will now see two buttons. click on the one that says "Run config tool". This will pop up another window for the tool. The "Driver" dropdown should have the options of "Audigy", "emu10k1", and "snd-emu10k1" (and maybe others?). Select one and hit "Okay".

You can also click on the "Troubleshooting" button of the configuration window to get some hints on how to fix things.

specifically, the problem is that the driver for my sound card seems to not exist, except for windows

i found a directory /dell/sblive that contains README and sblive.cpio.gz

the readme file says this:
when i enter zcat sblive.cpio.gz > /dev/fd0
i get
zcat: stdout: Input/output error

so i tried unzipping it and doing the cpio line right to the file, but that just puts my prompt on the next line, either like it's working on it, or it's waiting for additional input.

cpio -i -H crc sblive.cpio

i have also tried

cpio -i -H tar sblive.cpio
cpio sblive.cpio
cpio -i sblive.cpio

the all have the same effect, is it a command that takes forever, or am i typing it wrong, or is there something wrong with my system, or what?

what do i do? please help

Some thoughts:

Do you have a formatted floppy in the drive?

Try typing "zcat sblive.cpio.gz > /dev/floppy" instead.

how do i format the disk?

i tried changing it to floppy and i got
bash: /dev/floppy: Is a directory